Cicero's Philosophy of History

Matthew Fox

An original and thoroughly accessible study of a thinker who is key to the history of the humanities generally

Challenges existing views of Cicero and of his relationship to historiography, revealing the drama behind a number of his hitherto neglected writings

Cicero's Philosophy of History

Matthew Fox

Description

Cicero has long been seen to embody the values of the Roman republic. This provocative study of Cicero's use of history reveals that rather than promoting his own values, Cicero uses historical representation to explore the difficulties of finding any ideological coherence in Rome's political or cultural traditions. Matthew Fox looks to the scepticism of Cicero's philosophical education for an understanding of his perspective on Rome's history, and argues that neglect of the sceptical tradition has transformed the doubting, ambiguous Cicero into the confident proponent of Roman values. Through close reading of a range of his theoretical works, Fox uncovers an ironic attitude towards Roman history, and connects that to the use of irony in mainstream Latin historians. He concludes with a study of a little-known treatise on Cicero from the early eighteenth century which sheds considerable light on the history of Cicero's reception.

Cicero's Philosophy of History

Matthew Fox

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. Struggle, Compensation, and Argument in Cicero's Philosophy3. Reading and Reception4. Literature, History, and Philosophy: The Example of `De re publica'5. History with Rhetoric, Rhetoric with History: `De oratore' and `De legibus'6. History and Memory7. Brutus8. Divination, History, and Superstition9. Ironic History in the Roman Tradition10. Cicero from Enlightenment to Idealism11. Conclusions